Motherboard GUIDE: M.2 Support PCI-E Mode or Sata Mode

Amanda Wang · 12 Jul 2016 at 07:37

There are the two different modes on M.2 SSD. Such as Samsung 850 PRO SSD support SATA mode, and Samsung 950 PRO support PCI-E mode. But some MB just support PCI-E Mode or only support SATA Mode. so I think this info is good for every one.

ASUS

MSI

Gigabyte

Amanda Wang · 12 Jul 2016 at 07:38

Amanda Wang said:
There are the two different modes on M.2 SSD. Such as Samsung 850 PRO SSD support SATA mode, and Samsung 950 PRO support PCI-E mode. But some X99 MB just support PCI-E Mode or only support SATA Mode. so I think this info is good for every one.

ASUS

MSI

Gigabyte

IT Troll · 12 Jul 2016 at 13:12

It is worth highlighting that the difference in PCI-E speed (10 or 32 Gb/s) is caused by the M.2 slot running in either x2 or x4 mode. So in a way there are three modes in total.

Amanda Wang · 13 Jul 2016 at 08:27

IT Troll said:
It is worth highlighting that the difference in PCI-E speed (10 or 32 Gb/s) is caused by the M.2 slot running in either x2 or x4 mode. So in a way there are three modes in total.

you mean if support PCI-E (32Gb/s) can select three modes in BIOS?

IT Troll · 13 Jul 2016 at 15:07

More importantly the ability to run in x2 or x4 mode is a hardware limitation; number of PCI-E lanes. So you need to careful check the motherboard specification when choosing.

Smffy · 15 Jul 2016 at 15:54

IT Troll said:
More importantly the ability to run in x2 or x4 mode is a hardware limitation; number of PCI-E lanes. So you need to careful check the motherboard specification when choosing.

And more more importantly many boards on the Z170 chipset at least have dedicated 32gbps M.2 slots which run on the I/O not the PCI lanes from the CPU. I know you haven't listed any non x99 boards but its fairly important to anyone that thinks a single GPU would drop to x8 on skylake when in fact it would not.

Yaayuh! · 15 Jul 2016 at 16:04

Is it possible to run multiple M.2 drives? If so, on what boards?

My next upgrade i want to have an M.2 drive for OS and one for games preferably.

IT Troll · 15 Jul 2016 at 16:41

Smffy said:
And more more importantly many boards on the Z170 chipset at least have dedicated 32gbps M.2 slots which run on the I/O not the PCI lanes from the CPU. I know you haven't listed any non x99 boards but its fairly important to anyone that thinks a single GPU would drop to x8 on skylake when in fact it would not.

Well all Z170 motherboards have 20 PCI-E lanes from the chipset in addition to the 16 GPU dedicated ones from the CPU. But this list (not mine) is drawing attention to the speed differences on X99 boards. This is not really such a problem on the Z170 boards.

Rossi~ said:
Is it possible to run multiple M.2 drives? If so, on what boards?

Yes, although they tend to be quite expensive models; e.g. Asus Intel Z170-WS. There are some cheaper options in the Gigabyte Gaming range. Depends what sort of board you are looking for.
An alternative option would be to use a PCI slot adapter card for the second drive.